by Norman Green
She stopped when she hit the sidewalk.
The chopper was hovering low over Flushing Avenue. An NYPD blue and white screamed down the hill and slewed to a stop in the middle of the street.
“Shit,” Al said. She’d had it all wrong. This is a fuckup, she thought, she’d figured it wrong all the way around. She should have known these guys were cops, but they’d looked wrong . . . and why couldn’t they have just talked to her?
A young cop jumped out of the cruiser, pointed his pistol at her. He had it in both hands, combat stance, just like they teach you in the academy. Al raised her arms straight out, palms open. “GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!” he yelled at her. “RIGHT NOW!”
Frustration and anger bubbled in her bloodstream. “Defiance,” Tio Bobby had told her a hundred times, “generally gets you nowhere,” but she couldn’t help herself. She stared at the young cop in disdain as he shouted his instructions again. “DOWN ON THE GROUND! RIGHT NOW! DO IT!” Command voice, she thought, just like they teach you in . . .
“Don’t wet your panties,” she yelled back, anger and fear making her voice loud.
The young cop’s partner was out of the car now. Both Al and the young cop looked over at him. The guy held a set of cuffs in one hand, and he gave Al the eye.
She nodded, resigned.
“Turn around,” he said.
She complied. Inside the store, someone was down on his knees talking to the guy Al had hit with the bucket. A red-faced Korean was looking at the black mess on the floor and yelling at the top of his voice. Some sirens called to one another in the distance. She felt the cuff snap around her right wrist, heard that funny ratcheting sound it made as the cop clicked it shut. “Behind your back,” the guy said. “That’s good. Nice and easy. Gimme your other hand now, that’s a good girl. Okay, sister.”
Al stared at the tall man writhing on the floor just inside the lumber store. “Who’s he?”
“This way, Miss,” he said, his voice formal, telling her he wasn’t giving her anything, and he walked her over to the cruiser. He looked at his partner on the way past. “You can put that away now,” he said.
Fourteen
Inhale. One. Exhale.
She was conscious of the guy screaming, she couldn’t be in the same room and not hear him, but she wasn’t distracted.
Inhale. Two. Exhale.
She held her hands folded in her lap, one held loosely in the open palm of the other.
Inhale. Be aware of the sensation of breath, of the air rushing in, filling up, giving life. Three. Exhale. Feel it leaving, taking the soreness in your back with it . . .
Through half closed, heavy-lidded eyes she could see the far edge of the perp desk, she could see the man’s blue cotton shirt, red striped tie. She was aware that his voice was growing hoarse. He and his partner had been taking turns going at her for hours. “You assaulted a federal officer! Do you have any fucking idea how much trouble you’re in?” She was surprised they let him say “fuck,” her surprise broke her concentration, and she had to go back to one.
Inhale. One. Exhale.
Bad enough to get rousted by professionals. She could accept that, the NYPD did not always appreciate privateers like her and Marty, and a certain amount of conflict with cops was a part of the business, always had been, but it was gonna be a cold day in hell when she allowed herself to be intimidated by some chump from Kansas City.
She had come to think of him as Number Two. The other one was the friendly guy, this one was the screamer. Screw you, pal, she told him silently. You push me, I push back.
“He’s gonna need reconstructive surgery on his knee! You’re looking at a mandatory ten-year term! Mandatory! In a federal pen!” She knew what he wanted, he wanted her to spill her guts, he wanted to give her nothing in return, he wanted her so scared that she could hardly stand.
Inhale. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, douche bag, she thought. Exhale. He was overconfident, too close, she could have had her hands around his throat in a half second, and for an instant she burned to do it. Control yourself, she thought, for maybe the hundredth time since they put her in the chair. Control yourself. She remembered the words of one of her grade school teachers, she’d been using the phrase like a mantra. “She who loses her temper, loses.” It had not had the intended effect when she’d first heard it, but it seemed to be working a bit better now. Swallow it, she told herself. Keep it inside. Don’t forget your objective . . .
She shifted her gaze, raised her eyes to look him in the face. Middle-aged white guy, receding brown hair, the beginnings of jowls despite his lack of a paunch. The worried look in his eyes told her she was doing it right. He was gonna be the one who broke, not her, and when he was done for, maybe they’d bring in someone she could talk to.
“One,” she said.
He shut up immediately. To his left and to her right was a large mirror. One-way glass, naturally, and no way to know how many were watching.
“I was the one who was assaulted,” she said, “and by two of you, not one.”
“There were surveillance cameras in that place, and we’ve got footage that clearly shows—”
“Two,” she said, and he shut it just as quickly as he had the first time. Again, he reinforced her judgment that she was playing him correctly. Whoever these guys actually were, they really, really wanted to hear whatever she had to say, but they had no leverage, because if they did they’d have used it by now. “You’ve got nothing.” She said it without inflection, merely stated the facts as she saw them. “If you have any footage at all it will show that your men failed to identify themselves in any way until after they were disarmed.” She opened her eyes slightly wider. “And incapacitated.” She apologized silently to her meditation teacher, a tall bald-headed Jewish guy named Bernie. She had gone to him for advanced instruction in aikido, but he had maintained that she wasn’t ready and had bullied her into meditation practice instead. Unable to shake her anger, she had not done well. She thought she’d be learning something practical, not some mystical crock of transcendental bullshit. She had considered it all hocus-pocus at the time, figured Bernie for a fraud, but in the intervening years she had been unable to get his teachings out of her head, even though up until now she had completely missed his point.
“Three.” She allowed herself a small smirk, but it was not a slip, not a lapse, it was a part of the act, a deliberate goad. A tiny pinprick. “You guys ought to be more careful. Someone could have gotten seriously hurt.” The smirk went away. “You still could.” She leaned forward slightly. “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.” Her quiet threat was unmistakable.
Number Two jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over behind him. He slammed his hand on the desk and began screaming again, but from a safer distance.
“She who loses her temper, loses.” She tuned him out. Her eyelids drifted back to half-mast. Inhale. One. Exhale.
Inhale. Two. Exhale. She tried to feel which muscles were tense, tried to relax in the chair, tried to let her breath ease her aches and anxieties away. “Sit like a stack of bricks,” Bernie had told her, and she thought she might be getting it, except the nagging ache up the left side of her spine was beginning to get to her. Inhale. Three. Exhale. Her hands felt warm in her lap, almost hot. Inhale. Four. Exhale.
He departed some time later. They left her alone, for how long she could not have said, and then Number One came back.
Good cop, bad cop. It was still all they had, and these two were playing it like they’d only seen it at the movies. A real cop would know how to do this right . . . She’d heard stories, suspects hung upside down in a holding cell, getting worked over by some fat old sergeant who knew exactly where to hit, and how hard. She wondered how she would have fared, back in the day. But those old cops were long retired and gone, and when the new ones held a “tattoo party,” it was generally an impromptu affair triggered by someone’s frustrated loss of control. When that happened somebody generally got messed
up badly enough to require a trip to the emergency room.
Or, occasionally, the morgue.
If they’d sent in a fat old sergeant, things might have gotten interesting.
But they didn’t. Number One was just another college boy. Actually, he wasn’t a boy at all, he was about forty, just going gray, just getting a belly. His name was Figueroa, they must have decided that she’d identify with him easier, but he was a second-generation Mexican, not Puerto Rican. She could hear the broad nasal twang of upstate New York in his voice.
Didn’t speak Spanish.
Probably lived in fucking Westchester.
He picked up the chair that Number Two had knocked over, set it on its feet. Sat down, lowered his head, tried for eye contact. “Alessandra?” he said. “Al? Look at me, please. Please, Al.”
She complied, slowly, didn’t vary the cadence of her breath.
“We can’t keep this up,” he said.
“No shit.” She said it without heat.
“Your partner,” he said. “Mrs. Waters.”
Al felt a tickle of fear, a tiny worm chewing at her gut. Tune it out, she told herself, tune it out. They were bound to try this. Surprised it took them this long. She needed to count on Sarah’s instincts and her ability to keep her trap shut.
Had to rely on Sarah Waters . . .
Oh, Jesus Christ. . . .
Come on, she told herself, the girl’s Brooklyn, born and bred. She would never . . .
“We only need one of you. And we’re not handing immunity to someone who won’t work with us. I just want to give you this one last chance, Alessandra. You really do need to tell us your side of things.” He leaned in closer. “We know about Frank. We know what happened at the restaurant. Sarah’s talking, Al. Someone is going to answer for that poor bastard who bought it in that parking lot. Sarah wants out, and if somebody has to take the fall, she’s going to let it be you. Accessory to murder, conspiracy, assault, and that’s just for starters. Probably got some RICO statute violations we can work with.”
I’ll kill her, Al thought, I swear if the bitch says one damn word I will cut her goddam tongue out . . . That worm in her gut got a bit larger, and it took another bite.
Number One was still talking possible charges. Accessory. Assault with intent. Illegal flight. Conspiracy to commit. Concealing evidence. And given her record, the possibility of conviction was better than average, especially given the current political climate . . .
He added up the time, and he didn’t just lump it all together the way reporters did, either, he gave her what sounded like a fairly honest assessment of probable sentences, some consecutive and some concurrent. He even hacked off the normal number of years for good behavior, being confident, he told her, that she would be a model prisoner . . . “You could be looking at ten, minimum, probably more like twelve or fourteen.”
Inhale. One. Exhale. The muscle in her back tightened into a knot. It was no good, the best she could manage was to hold on and pretend.
She looked at his eyes, and the anxiety she saw there seemed real enough. That sealed it. Hold on, she told herself. Almost there.
“This is a one-time offer, Miss Martillo. Good for today only.”
Inhale. One. Exhale. Her gut told her that they were out of ammunition. “Arrest me,” she said.
The kink in her back was becoming intolerable.
Inhale. One. Exhale.
She hadn’t asked for a lawyer, purposely, hadn’t demanded they charge her or let her go.
Inhale. Two. Exhale.
The muscles that ran up the left side of her spine were doing their best to bend her over backward. It took an effort of will for her to remain motionless. She derided herself. You pussy, she thought. Bodhidharma did this for days at a time. Years, if you believed the stories. Wonder how many times he had to go back to one.
Inhale. One. God it hurt. Exhale.
Number Two opened the door and held it for an older man. Number One’s act was over, though, his face was etched with flop sweat. Whatever it was they’d counted on him to extract from her, he hadn’t gotten it done, and now he was worried. And here comes the fat sergeant, at least metaphorically, she thought. The guy in question was a comfortably overweight man, round rosy face, blue eyes, potato nose. His tie was askew and he had a pale brown stain on the belly of his yellow shirt. Al, baby, she told herself, this guy looks like he’s for real, we just stepped up in weight class, but maybe we’ll finally find out what they’re looking for . . .
He sat down across from her. “Seven hours, twenty-six minutes in a hard chair without moving a muscle,” he said. “I’m impressed. Buddhist?”
She shook her head once. She wanted to stretch the kink out of her back, but she resisted the impulse. No giving away points, she told herself, not this close to the end of the game. “Couldn’t get with that nonviolent shit,” she said.
He snorted. “I’ll bet.”
She reached out her right hand. “Al Martillo,” she said.
“I know,” he said, but after a moment he shook her hand. “Bobby Fallon.”
She had to ask. “Sergeant?”
“Looie,” he said.
“NYPD.” It was a statement, not a question.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Where’d you find these Gomers?”
He glanced over his shoulder at Number One, who clenched his teeth and looked away. “Be nice,” Fallon said, looking back at her. “The law enforcement community is one big happy family these days. Al, can we cut the bullshit?”
She shrugged. “Your call.”
“You been around. How come you didn’t ask for a lawyer?”
“I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
Fallon laughed at that. Number One looked like he was going to crack a tooth. “You didn’t sit in that chair for seven hours and . . .” Fallon looked at his watch. “. . . twenty-seven minutes to show us how tough you are.”
“No.”
“Or to make us see what a mistake the department made when we let you get away.”
She shook her head. “Look, Fallon,” she said. “Why can’t you just be straight with me and tell me what this is all about?”
“You’re working without a license,” he said.
“I work for Marty Stiles.”
“My old pal Marty. How’s he doing?”
“He has good days and bad days.”
Fallon gave her a look. “I must have caught him on a bad day,” he told her. “Okay, suppose you skate on the license, there’s still this minor matter of assaulting a federal officer. We can probably get that to stick.”
“Get real,” she said. “It’s a bullshit rap, he never identified himself and you know it. Two helpless women, all alone in the world, we still got the right to defend ourselves. You can charge me, but you’ll never get a conviction, after I get off I’ll bring civil suit, and I’ll do it in Brooklyn, because I live there, not Manhattan, and we’ll try the case in front of a jury of my peers, from Brooklyn. Twelve ordinary guys just like the ones from that store on Flushing Avenue, you guys are nothing but a pain in the ass to them. You know what that means. You lose, I win.”
“Take you twenty years to collect,” he said.
“I got time.” She remembered back to her academy days, Interrogation 101. How funny would it be to read him the next line in his script? Establish contact, use his first name, try to build a bridge. Make it easy for him to trust you . . . She leaned in. “Bobby,” she said, peering into his blue eyes, “help me out, here. Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on? Hmmm? Then we can all go home.”
He snorted. “You got a pair of fucking balls, you know that?”
“Whatever,” she said. “Do it your way, that’s what you want. Go ahead. What’s next?”
He sighed, examined his fingernails. “Next I appeal to your sense of patriotism.”
“I pledge allegiance,” she said. “What else you got? ’Cause pretty soon I’m gonna walk.”
; He sighed again. “All right,” he said. “What can you tell me about Frank Waters?”
At least it’s a start, she thought. “Father of Frank Junior. Ex-wife named Sarah, who happens to be my client in this matter.”
“You can give up more than that,” he said. “The guy’s apartment was ransacked. You do that?”
“I was there,” she said, “but I looked, I didn’t ransack. If the place was trashed, I’d start with that dirtbag building super.”
“The Serbian female?”
It was her turn, and she gave him a look. “No, Sherlock, the Serbian female’s husband.”
Fallon shifted in his chair to glare at Number One, whose face turned red. “Okay,” he said, turning back to her. “Okay, you got us, that’s one. What did you find?”
“Keys. Some handwritten notes, looked like passwords or entry codes of some kind.”
He exhaled, like he’d been holding in his breath too long. “I’ll need those.”
She nodded. “And you got his service record.”
“And his arrest record.”
She shook her head. “Come on, Fallon, you know what kind of guy Frankie was. He might have been a dope, but he wasn’t a bad guy. He just ran with some bad people, that’s all.”
“Was? You figure he’s dead?”
“You got me,” she said. “That’s one.”
“Yeah.” He shifted in his chair, uncomfortable. “Maybe the guys he ran with were worse than you know.” He turned and grimaced at Number One, then stood up. “Let’s go somewhere so we can talk.”
About time, she thought. “All right.” She stood up slowly, one hand on the back of her chair. “What did you do with Sarah?”
“She went home hours ago. Had her goddam lawyer on the phone before they even got her into the cruiser.”
“You didn’t take her phone?”